Covington Commission to Vote on City Engineer's Ouster

A special meeting of the Covington City Commission is called for Wednesday afternoon.

There is one item on the agenda.

The commission will consider "ending the city's employment relationship with development director/city engineer Mike Yeager."

The River City News reported last week that City Manager David Johnston said that he had asked for Yeager's resignation. The 8-year veteran of Covington City Hall was heavily criticized in a report about the management of the city's code enforcement department. Multiple employees had resigned abruptly from the department, and one was critical of Yeager, who, during the investigation, sought public records from that former employee's previous employer, the City of Blue Ash, Oh.

Yeager oversaw and reported publicly on nearly every infrastructure project, from roads and sidewalks to Riverfront Commons and the Licking River Greenway & Trails. Johnston said that Rick Davis, public works director and assistant city engineer, will take on the bulk of that work in the interim.

Covington City Hall has lost key leadership roles consistently over the past year, either voluntarily or through aggressive suggestion.

Johnston said last week that the city is still waiting for a final report from Municipal Solutions, the firm that led the process that led to his hiring, that would detail a proposed organizational structure for the city.